Improving the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Colour (BIPOC) at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information
The Diversity Working Group was founded in 2019 by Tomoko Shida, Moska Rokay, Renee Saucier, Stefanie Martin and Tam Rayan, with the hopes of evoking change and creating community at the University of Toronto’s iSchool.
Our group works to improve the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Colour (BIPOC) at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information through workshops, reading groups, special events, and advocacy work with faculty and university administration.
We welcome current students and alumni to join us in our work!
Recent and Ongoing Projects
A Report on Diversity and Inclusion Experiences at the Faculty of Information 2020
Syllabi Deconstruction
- As part of our commitment to holding the iSchool’s faculty accountable, the Diversity Working Group is reviewing course syllabi. Our goal is to identify the extent to which iSchool instructors include BIPOC scholars and practitioners in their courses’ reading lists and guest lectures. Our scope is all the required course syllabi we can find from 2016 onwards for the MI concentrations, the INF1005/1006 offerings, the MMst program, and the BI program.
So far, we are finding that the proportion of identifiably BIPOC scholars on course syllabi is often around 15–20% or much lower. This is unacceptable. As a reference, over 51% of Toronto’s population is BIPOC.
Our syllabus reviews are ongoing. To promote transparency, we plan to release our tabulations in full when the project is complete. If you would like to see tabulations for published data before then, please contact thediversityworkinggroup@gmail.com.
Lorena Almaraz
Lauren Baek
Ben Feldman
Lo Humeniuk
Rida Idrees
Tina Liu
Jackson Longworth
Julie Shi
Anjani Singh